This is my final column for The Times.
In the memo I wrote three years ago when applying for this job after 11 years at The Times Book Review, I vowed “to write to Times readers rather than to Twitter or to Slack.” I knew my positions, fundamentally liberal but often at odds with what had become illiberal progressive dogma, would ruffle feathers. But as I explained, “I want to write about that vast center/liberal space and to address what people really think and believe but are often too afraid to say.”
I also stipulated that I could do this job only if I quit Twitter, which had by then become a forum that could lead journalists to mistake the loudest voices for the most legitimate or to temper their positions so as to avoid social media blowback. The list of social media vortexes today includes not only Twitter’s successor, X, but also Bluesky, Threads, Reddit and countless other online forums.
I did not want my positions to be unduly guided by what others might think, be they friends or strangers, office colleagues or online trolls, activist organizations or institutional powers. And the lure of affirmation can be just as potent as the fear of attack.
I wasn’t looking to be loved or even liked. I had friends and family for that. I wanted to write what I believed to be the truth, based on facts and guided by fairness, but never driven by fear.
That wasn’t because I was insensitive to other people or enjoyed getting death threats but because I believed in the principles Adolph S. Ochs laid out on assuming control of The Times in 1896: “to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved” and to “invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.” Readers’ respect for those values was — and is — more important to me than readers’ agreement with any one of my opinions.
I couldn’t follow that approach if I were looking over my shoulder, checking my feed or worrying how anyone would react.
As a columnist, I covered a wide range of subjects, including academic freedom, culture, language, women’s rights, gay rights, higher education, science and health, and politics, including several columns dedicated to how the Democratic Party had lost its way.
But the reporting I’m most proud of is when I used my voice to stand up for people whose lives or work had come under attack, whether they were public figures or were dragged into the public eye because they’d dared to speak or act in ways that unjustly elicited professional or social condemnation: A popular novelist ostracized for alleged “cultural appropriation.” A physician assistant who was excoriated on social media for standing up to bullies. A Palestinian writer whose appearance at a prominent book fair was canceled. An early beneficiary of affirmative action who dared to explore its unintended consequences. Vulnerable gay teenagers who described being misled by a politicized medical establishment into dubious gender transition treatments. A public university president who was driven away by a campus besieged with political division. Social work students and faculty undermined by a school that had betrayed its own principles. A public health expert who risked opprobrium from his peers by calling out his profession on groupthink.
All found themselves at odds with the people or communities that had once supported them, a disorienting place to be, especially in these polarized times. In a world in which too many people are inclined to think of politics and morality as team sports, one side good and the other side evil, nuanced stories that complicate facile narratives demand to be told.
Several years ago, The Times ran a campaign with the tagline “The truth is hard.” The way I’ve interpreted this is that the truth may be hard for some people to hear, but the truth should never be hard for journalists to tell. In our efforts to shed light on difficult subjects or to question conventional wisdom, we should never refrain from speaking what we believe to be the truth. Not because we think others can’t handle it and certainly not because we cannot handle it ourselves.
Readers are smarter and more thoughtful than the news media sometimes gives them credit for. They don’t need our protection. When journalists hold back, readers can sense they aren’t getting the full story. This sows doubt and skepticism at a time when readers desperately need news they can trust.
I will end with a message of gratitude to those readers. I have truly appreciated the responses, both supportive and critical, I’ve gotten from so many of you. My hope is that even when my arguments haven’t persuaded you, they’ve led you to ask questions or helped you arrive at your own answers to complex problems. It is only when we ask tough questions, including of ourselves, that we arrive at a full picture of what’s going on. And often, that’s when we discover what we truly believe.
Though I am leaving The Times, I will not be leaving behind these principles in my work as a journalist. Readers depend on our telling the truth more than ever.
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Pamela Paul is an Opinion columnist at The Times, writing about culture, politics, ideas and the way we live now.
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